So I want to dip my toe into PC gaming, and i have a build in mind (pretty much cut and paste the new 400$ APU build they just released), now im just waiting for the money to come in, but I was wondering something, Should I go with an APU (more specificaly the AMD A10-5800k) or a standalone GPU? My budget is around 450-80 dollars and I want this to run most games at medium or high at around 30 or 40 fps. Im not interested in much else, and anything that is to graphically demanding I'll get on my Xbox.
I strongly advise you not to go with an APU build. You could go with an i3 build and do some indie gaming and general use, and keep gaming on your xbox untill you can scrape anouther $100 for a discrete GPU. The APU will outpower an xbox, but if you get any decent GPU, it's going to be a bottleneck. You could prolly manage to fit a discrete GPU into a $450 build, but you would have to make compromises I don't recommend making.
would recomend getting a bit more money and get a am3+ gaming rig for cpu a phenom 965be would be a good choice whit a gpu 7790 or a 7850 the reason i sujest a amd built is that a i3 is dual core an the phenom 965be is quad core and games are starting to use more then 2 core plus you have a good upgrade path and you could stop gaming on xbox and play games on your pc
This build is under $400, so you could prolly squeeze a cheap GPU in there, Buit I would strongly advise you just to save up for a nicer one like a 7870, which will cost you about $200.
I agree with the guys, get a decent PC build first without the GPU, and hopefully next month you will be able to drop a 7870 in there and get to the gaming!